Cities of Knowledge: Mediterranean Artis

With the Muslim expansion into the Mediterranean Basin, the capture of the Iberian Peninsula in 711, and, later on, the conquest of Sicily and South Italy by the very beginning of the 9th century, the Christian Latin West came into direct contacts with the new Muslim Empire. In fact, the new Muslim Empire, which ruled the world from Gibraltar to India, with its capital city of Baghdad served from the mid 8th century as the center of trade network which tied under its rule spaces in Africa, Asia and the South of Europe. Moreover, diplomacy between the Carolingian and the Ottonian courts with potent Muslim powers in Baghdad and Cordoba, wars and conflicts in the age of Crusade, and extensive trade ventures between western Europe and the “Orient” in the High Middle Ages brought a new aesthetic language – a sort of artistic lingua franca – that strongly shaped the art of Latin Christian Europe, Byzantium and that of the Muslim world. In this series of lectures/discussions, the artistic interactions between the three continents will be chronologically discussed, while setting our gaze in each lecture in one of the important urban centers of the Mediterranean. In addition, contact zones, such as important trade centers, and particular frontier regions located on the verges of the Christian and Muslim worlds will be highlighted as the major interactive spaces for artistic exchanges and mobility of people and objects.